The "Green" Biofuel Killers

Are good intentions a legitimate excuse for negligent homicide?

Biofuel production will significantly contribute to the early,
avoidable deaths of at minimum between 10 and 20 million people
worldwide in the year 2008. Based on United Nations global poverty
statistics and advice by experts, that has been my conservative public
estimate of the biofuel enhanced death toll of the world food crisis.
This planet wide disaster obviously has other significant driving
factors, such as high oil prices, the Australian drought, and
expanding populations, but biofuel production is the only major
contributing element that is 100%% under our immediate control.
Privately, I fear the malnutrition body count will climb higher, as
food prices are rising quickly, and the higher they go, the more
people will die. Global deaths due to malnutrition and related
illness in 2008 could reach as high as 20 to 30 million, but I hope I
and wrong in that dark suspicion. Economists estimate that given the
provable statistics, as many as 30 million people might be going
hungry in Bangladesh at this very moment. The fundamental moral
question is, why are our politicians making a difficult situation
dramatically worse by turning mountains of edible grain into fuel at a
time the whole world desperately needs more basic, staple foods?

To put this tragedy in historical perspective, the infamous Cambodian
dictator Pol Pot killed approximately 1.7 million people between 1975
and 1979, mainly by starvation due to his idiotic agricultural
policies. Chairman Mao Tse Tung's 1958 "Great Leap Forward" 5 year
plan caused the death by starvation of millions of Chinese, with
mortality estimates ranging widely from 14 million up to 40 million.
Mao tried to forcefully shift China's agricultural based economy to
greater industrial output. Mao had the best of intentions, just like
George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John
McCain, who all support forcing by government decree the massive
diversion of food to fuel. These leaders hold firm to their almost
mystical beliefs in biofuels, even after being repeatedly warned that
this shift from agriculture to fuel production is starving people
around the world, and is murder for the environment as well. An exact
body count of the Great Biofuel Famine will never be possible, and
usually the most affluent sectors of society only realize the
magnitude of famines years after the tragic events occur.

Unless the biofuel bandwagon is halted by public protest, by the year
2020 the world will be diverting 400 million tons of grain each year
into ethanol production, which is calorically equal to 100%% of current
global rice production. There have been major demonstrations and/or
food riots in 23 countries, and according to the World Bank at least
33 nations face political instability as staple food prices have risen
83%% in the last 3 years. Biofuel production is equivalent to a new
tax on food that starves the poor in order to feed money to rich
agricultural corporations. Big business makes our biofuels, not Mom
and Pop.

German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul stated that
production of biofuels is "30 to 70%% responsible" for food price
inflation. Bill Clinton stated that "What's really hurting the food
markets is America moving into ethanol." Massachusetts Congressman
Jim McGovern stated that “If there was a secret vote (on biofuels),
there is a pretty large number of people who would like to reassess
what we are doing.”

Oil price increases have not shrunk the human food supply, but biofuel
production has! The more biofuels we produce, the less food we have
to eat, because we grow biofuel crops, even switchgrass, using the
same land, water, fertilizer, farm equipment, and labor we use to grow
food. New studies have shown that ethanol from non-food cellulose
sources, such as switchgrass, wood chips, and crop waste, etc., will
never been economically viable, so biofuels are essentially a dead-end
technology. Biodiesel from algae will never amount to much either, as
we would need approximately 30 million acres of concrete or plastic
lined algae ponds to meet 100%% of projected US automotive fuel usage
by the year 2022. Algae schemes that use less land invariably call
for feeding algae sugar, which means growing sugarcane, corn, or sugar
beets, so you are simply trading ethanol potential to make oil instead
of vodka.

Every year the human race burns the equivalent of 400 years worth of
total planetary vegetation in the condensed form of fossil fuels, so
how are we ever going to replace all of that concentrated biomass
energy by growing a relatively small volume of biofuel crops on our
overpopulated, fresh water starved little planet? How are America's
homeless, the elderly, the disabled, veterans, and all those living on
low fixed incomes going to survive 14 more years of rapid food price
inflation caused by the Bush-Pelosi biofuel plan? The justifying
claim that ethanol is a "clean fuel" is false as well. Ethanol
blended fuels burn cleaner on a per gallon basis, but not on a miles
traveled basis, because ethanol contains 33%% less energy than gasoline
and thus yields poor gas mileage. Ethanol will not even help clean
our air.

Biofuel production causes water pollution, water shortages, erodes
topsoil, tortures wildlife, and numerous studies have proven that
biofuel farming speeds global warming by releasing massive amounts of
greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous
oxide. So ask yourself the basic question; Why are United States and
European Union politicians still falsely claiming that turning our own
food into fuel is good for the environment and for society in
general?

For more information and better energy alternatives, see
http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

Christopher Calder